Hypocrisy

There was this certain episode of the F Word that showed Gordon Ramsey eating a fresh, raw puffin's heart. He caught the bird himself too, risking his life and almost falling off the cliff when sky fishing. The gross part of the whole thing was breaking the bird's neck, and then going on to tearing the gut out of the dead bird. It is pretty graphic and that episode had outraged so many viewers. Some reckon that the killing was too cruel, some think that eating a raw heart was offensive.

Does that smells like hypocrisy to you? It certainly does to me.

The puffin eating was done in Iceland, where it is pretty popular. I look at as a cultural difference. I certainly will not eat a puffin, not because it is cruel, but because it is said to taste a little gamey. The birds died a quick death, pretty painless. Why are we react so strongly to stuff like that? Is breaking the neck of a puffin more cruel than leading a cow into the slaughter house and then killing it by nailing it with a metal bolt into its brain? Yes, that thing that Javier Bardem used in No Country for Old Men! I have seen the video in school, it is as disturbing as breaking the neck of the puffin. Which to me, isn't that much of a big deal.

And what's up with protesting against dog eating? It is JUST ANOTHER MEAT! Goodness, just because you love dogs and have them as pets doesn't mean others do. If I own a pig like George Clooney, does that mean it will offend me that people around me are eating it? There are so many fish keepers out there? So we stop eating fish? I am a tree hugger, then I cannot eat fruits and vegetables lah?

You can eat whatever the hell you fancy, as long as the animal that you are eating is didn't suffer too much or at the brink of extinction. I certainly do not want the whales to go the way of the Dodo (no more Moby Dick) nor do I want to see sharks with their fins cut off and thrown back to the ocean. Anyway, I wonder what is the big deal about sharks' fins. They are pretty tasteless things with not much nutritional value. Oh and there is foie gras. Poor geese being force fed to get grossly fat. Those poor things, but I love foie gras! I know, it is bad, and I am so ashamed of myself for enjoying something like that. I don't eat it often, maybe once a year? Clogged arteries anyone?

Most of us buy our meat in clean sterile supermarkets or the not too clean wet markets. We usually do not see the whole carcass, just chunks of meat that do not resemble anything like the animal anymore. That said, I used to walk past a dead pig every morning when I was going to school. The whole hog. Some mornings I will see the butcher using the blow torch to remove the hair on the pig, and that certainly didn't smell very pleasant. Do you know the plight of battery hens? They are crammed together with hardly any space to move. All they do is eat and sleep in the same spot, sometimes (or most times in their own poop). Seriously, it is hard to buy free range all the time, it cost a bomb!

Just because we do not kill does not make us any less sinful or guilty than the ones that do. I do admit, I am a hypocrite, I do not think I am able to raise my own pigs and hens and then killing them myself. Now, can you imagine stick a knife into a cow??? I can't!